{"id":36855,"date":"2025-05-19T17:36:42","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T22:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/?p=36855"},"modified":"2025-05-19T17:58:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T22:58:31","slug":"to-book-or-room-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/?p=36855","title":{"rendered":"To Book Ahead, or Not?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Motel rooms in Ludington Michigan.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last summer I went to Michigan on a photo trip. I did not book any rooms in advance. Why?\u00a0 Flexibility. What if the conditions were so good at Trillium Ravine Nature Preserve (SW Michigan) that I wanted to stay another day? What if a photo location didn’t pan out and I wanted to move on much earlier than I had planned? The point is, I often don’t know where I will stay overnight until late in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

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So before I leave home I go online at Trip Advisor and check out several places to stay at each potential overnight town or village. I make a 3×5 card for each town with motel names, addresses, and their current overnight rate. I stick to places with at least a three star rating, and preferably 4 stars. This is one side of my card for Ludington. There are more motels on the back side of the card. I have stayed at the Ventura Motel and Ludington Beach House before and they are two of my preferred places to stay in Ludington. When I was at the point on my trip that I decided Ludington would be my place for the night, I started calling. The Ventura Motel and Ludington Beach House were already booked full, so I found a room at the Vista Villa Motel, a new place for me.<\/p>\n

It was that way for the rest of my trip. When I decided where I wanted to stay overnight, I pulled out the 3×5 card for that town\/village, started calling, and found a place.<\/p>\n

Why not look up places to stay on my phone while I am on the road? Because that is time consuming, and also because the internet is iffy in some areas of Michigan, especially up north. So I want places and phone numbers on a 3×5 card all ready to go.<\/p>\n

I do Michigan photo trips during the week to avoid busy Michigan weekends, and I also avoid holidays.<\/p>\n

Do I ever get stuck without a room? So far, in 30 years of photo trips in Michigan, only once was I not able to find a motel room. I slept in my car in a campground.<\/p>\n

Do I always travel without advance reservations? No. There are exceptions. When I want to shoot in Rocky Mountain National Park, I know in advance I will want to shoot for at least 2-3 days, maybe more. Motels book up early in nearby Estes Park, especially in the summer, so I book ahead by several weeks or even months.\u00a0 The same is true for Yosemite, or Acadia National Park in the fall.\u00a0 So whether or not I book ahead depends on where I am going, how busy the area is at that time of year, and how much flexibility I want.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last summer I went to Michigan on a photo trip. I did not book any rooms in advance. Why?\u00a0 Flexibility. What if the conditions were so good at Trillium Ravine Nature Preserve (SW Michigan) that I wanted to stay another … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36855"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36864,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36855\/revisions\/36864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}